Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris talk Fast & Furious 6

Blazing on the screen on May 24 is the latest installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise, ‘Fast & Furious 6.’

Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson lead the returning cast of all-stars as the global blockbuster franchise built on speed races to its next continent in “Fast & Furious 6.” Reuniting for their most high-stakes adventure yet, fan favorites Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Elsa Pataky are joined by badass series newcomers Luke Evans and Gina Carano.

For Tyrese Gibson and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, who met on 2 Fast 2 Furious, and came back on Fast Five, it’s been a joyride for both to see this series last as long as it has.

It a recently interview, with other journalists, Blackfilm.com was able to chat with both of them on their experience on the film and the series.

What do you think it is about this franchise that keeps bringing, not only the audience back, but the actors as well?

Tyrese Gibson: Man, I got the answers for your question though. It always started with the cars and people’s love and passion for vehicles. But, then came a bunch of action and then came more characters and then came more sex appeal and ladies. And then came us going and traveling to all different parts of the world. And it’s just story line and everything, a sense of family, all of that is what keeps–it just keeps people guessing. It’s exciting. The action sequences are on like just cutting edge technology. So, that’s just what it’s about.

Iron Man 3 continues to blow everybody out of the water with great numbers, highest grossing film, and breaking some records. And your film will be up next. Do you guys think that Fast & Furious 6 can take down Iron Man 3 and top the box office?

Ludacris: Well, you know, the thing is, man, I’m going to be honest with you. I think the competition, you know, our box office numbers compared to everybody else is something that the Hollywood folks get caught up in. All we do every day when we’re on the set is feel the pressure of knowing that the fans are waiting on something that’s really good. And we work real hard at making the best version of this movie that we can make, especially if the one that we had just finished, you know, was considered one of the best ones since the franchise had been started.

So, you know, if the last one was horrible it’d of been easier to make a better movie with this. But, they loved it so much we were just working real hard to try and top that. And so, the competition is honestly within us showing up every day to be the vest version of us we can be. And whatever the box office numbers are going to be, man, that’s just what it is. But, salute to Iron Man 3 for those numbers. It’s a beautiful thing. We love that. I hope they call me for Iron Man 4.

What character would you want to play if you could do Iron Man 4?

Ludacris: Man, listen, I’ll do catering, whatever the hell they need.

Tyrese: Iron Chef around here.

Being that the both of you have been part of the series early on, what was it like coming back, having done the last film all together and now you have a bigger cast and adding more characters. And for Tyrese you got to be more physical in this film.

Tyrese: Well, that was always the goal, you know, for me I love action movies. I got my share of action stars that inspire me. and I actually am happy that I haven’t seen a million movies, so when it come time to me trying to figure out a way to bring something different to action actions I pride myself in feeling like, damn, I’m doing something that probably ain’t been done before because you ain’t got no other references, so you just like look, if I feel it, I do it. And I’ve never seen anybody jump from a white mustang to a blue little Papa Smurf car and then witnesses a tank crush it. So, I was really fired up that Justin even wanted me to be a part of that scene.

And Ludacris, how about yourself coming back and just being part of this ensemble again?

Ludacris: Man, it feels great to come back, man, you know, especially being a black man and not getting killed off.

Tyrese: Come on, black man ain’t getting killed.

Ludacris: So, there you have it. I’m grateful, man. I’m blessed. And I feel good about being part of this franchise, man. I couldn’t ask for much more. And you know we’ll see where it goes.

Tyrese: We don’t have to practice the death face. Oh. Oh. No acting coach for the death face.

So some other franchises that have had six chapters recently are Star Wars and Saw. How do you guys compare yourselves to those franchises?

Ludacris: We don’t.

Tyrese: Yeah, we set out to be the most successful franchise in history. Come on.

Better than Star Wars.

Tyrese: Better than Star Wars, man, we’re on the way. We on our way, man. You know nothing can–I mean, Star Wars is historic, but you know when you try to compare the two, you can’t really do that. However, we set to be the most successful franchise.

Ludacris: We have goals. We’re not in competition. But, we got goals. And I often wonder since George Lucas gave up the Star Wars to Disney or whatever it was. It was Disney?

Yeah.

Ludacris: I’m just wondering how good that one is right now because George Lucas is very hands on maintaining the integrity of the Star Wars franchise. And it’d be interesting to see what this one even looks like. I’m interested in seeing it.

There are so many great driving scenes in this, but who is the best and worst driver out of the cast?

Ludacris: I’m probably one of the best because I’m fearless. I’m going to be real with you, I think Paul Walker is probably the best driver for real. He has a crazy stable of cars.

Tyrese: This has been his passion for a long time.

Ludacris: He’s the most authentic car dude of this franchise. He has people that work from him that sit on the internet all day and try and track down the whole collection of certain cars so that he can say that he owns them all. And then he sits on them and watches them rise in value. I mean it’s a different thing.

Tyrese: The worst driver is probably the Rock. I mean he can’t fit in half the cars that they make or produce around the world.

Ludacris: I don’t think I would ever invite Dwayne to ride in one of my cars. There’d probably be baby oil all over the damn place.

Director Justin Lin has orchestrated some really intricate and complex action scenes. But the action scenes from Fast and Furious 6 were better than anything we’ve seen in a while. Can you talk about the hardest action scenes to film and why it was so difficult?

Ludacris: I didn’t really get much action because, of course, I’m the brains and the computer geek. But, this guy right here can tell you all about it.

Tyrese: Action-wise I think one of the most challenging scenes was probably the big tank sequence. And the reason it was challenging for me because when he explained it it made no damn sense. But, when you see it all put together it was just crazy that Justin Lin’s brilliance had the foresight to understand the beginning, middle and end of the outcome of what that scene would be. And so we all contributed and for me that was one of my favorite scenes. I think the big plane sequence in the end people are going to love it. Some people are going to feel whatever kind of way about it, but I think the highlight was definitely the tank sequence in my opinion.

Let’s get back on the cars. You guys were just talking about Paul Walker’s car collection. What is the most attractive thing to you about a muscle car and has this franchise influenced your car collection?

Tyrese: How fast it can go from zero to 60, how many seconds. And what was the other one about the car collection? What was the other question?

Has being a part of these films influenced your car collection? Like how many cars have you purchased since you’ve been on these films?

Ludacris: Oh, I purchased two cars from the Fast and Furious franchise actually.

Tyrese: This is true.

Ludacris: So, when I was in Too Fast, Too Furious there was Louis Vuitton painted Ram truck that I got.

Ludacris: And then the car, the big truck that The Rock–a part of Rock’s convoy, the gray one in Fast Five, I bought that, too.

What about you, Ty?

Tyrese: To be honest, there is a certain unspoken–whether people actually say it or not, there is a certain unspoken responsibility that you feel to drive fly cars because I mean you don’t want to be seen in like something extra corny when you’re associated to the Fast franchise. So, I mean I drive a Fisker Karma that I love. It’s all over the internet. You all should pull it up and check your boy out because I’m smashing LA right now. And if I sounded like a sports announcer–right now I think my car game has definitely went to another level. I mean, you know, just the custom interior that I got going, along with the rims, it’s just a perfect complement to what I got going on in LA. And most cars can’t see me.

The both of you cheated in this film, and neither of you have girlfriends or love interests. If you could play director, who would you cast in actresses out right now.

Ludacris: Halle Berry.

Tyrese: We’re both fighting over Halle Berry being in the franchise.

Ludacris: She does do big franchise type movies.

Tyrese: Sex scenes, yeah, so we need that.

Do you think she would do it?

Tyrese: You never know.

Ludacris: Yeah, I’m thinking like listen, we seen Jordana pregnant. She’s pregnant right now. We could really make use of this Halle Berry in this movie. Give me some of that Halle Berry bottom lip come on, oh, my God.

Tyrese: I didn’t even really think about it like that, man, like what are we doing, bro, for real. Damn. We need some women in our lives. Like what the–what’s going on, man.

Ludacris: You got computers and cars.

Tyrese: The thing is we are the guys that really got, you know what I mean, our share of energy out there. I don’t even want to say the other word, you know what I mean?

Ludacris: Swag. Swag.

Tyrese: And it’s like the guys that got girls in the movie, they really ain’t popping like that.

Ludacris: What? He said that.

Tyrese: Yeah, man. It’s crazy.

Tyrese: Like this is a rigorous contradiction in the franchise, man. It’s just crazy.

Do you think that there will be more films to come, what is it that you want to add to your character? Would it be another location? And like you mentioned, this was the longest runway, so if you wanted a place where you can shoot and we can just drive all day long, where would it be?

Ludacris: Where in the world?

Yeah.

Ludacris: Man, I would love to go to Abu Dhabi, go to the Dubai. I woke up laying there in Abu Dhabi because we all know you know it’s a lot of money out there made up in car. They got a lot of crazy cars. So, I’m thinking that would be good.

Tyrese: I’m staying at a hotel right now and there’s like a shake that stand there and this dude’s got a Maybach, a Bugatti and the Bentley Arnage, in front of the dang ole hotel and it’s just crazy. So, it’s like they are not into cars. They are crazy about cars. And they customize them. And they’re like they compete with other shakes, man. They be trying to like outdo each other. So, it’s like we go out there they’ll just open up their whole collection and let us use their car even if we wreck them. They wouldn’t care.

Ludacris: Abu Dhabi, Dubai would be the next move for sure.

Chris, we’ve heard your two new singles. You sound really hungry and motivated. How’s your new music coming along? And how do you feel going back to it after being in this movie?

Ludacris: Oh, man, I feel great, man. We’re dropping a mix tape of songs on the same day the movie comes out. So, May 24. And then my album Little Versa [sp] will be out sometime around September. So, yeah, man, it’s a lot of good music, so I appreciate you taking notice to that, my man.

Tyrese: Well, I’m doing something I would consider like a trilogy. I have a book and a double album and a documentary all called Black Rose and that should be coming out next year. I’m also working with this new artist who used to be in this group called RichGirl and she went solo. Her name is Lyndriette, a/k/a Crystal. And she’s actually out here in London with me. and I think the music thing that I’m doing real right now and we’re on our way to a number one is TGT, which stands for Tyrese Genuine and Tank, the first single is called Sex Never Felt Better and we just shot the video and we shot a–did a photo shoot last week. And we’re just excited about that, a shout out to Atlantic Records for putting the whole building behind the group TGT. We’ve got a 32-city tour too coming up too; you know what I’m saying? Holler at your boy. You know what I’m saying? Ha, ha, ha ha. Oh, you know, next time we’re going to try and get you all on the plane, man, even though you all would have been jetlagged as hell, we need you all out here, man, let’s do this.